Here Grant waited the onset, with almost the certainty of annihilation. But the onset never came; that night Buell crossed upward of 20,000 fresh troops; the broken army of Grant was reformed; Wallace's division of it joined the main body; and next day, after a terrible and disastrous fight, the southrons slowly and sullenly retired from the field they had so nobly won the day before.
A horrid scene that field presented, as foot by foot the fresh thousands of the Federals wrenched it from the shattered and decimated Confederates; the ground furrowed by cannon, strewn with abandoned arms, broken gun-carriages, horses plunging in agony, and the dead and dying in every frightful attitude of torture!
The battle of Shiloh was the bloodiest of the war. The little army of the South had lost near one-third of its whole number; while the Federals had bought back their camp with the loss of not less than 16,000 men.
And, while the bloodiest field, none had so splendidly illustrated the stubborn valor of the men and the brilliant courage of their leaders. Gladden had fallen in the thickest of the fight—the circumstances of his death sending a freshened glow over the bright record he had written at Contreras and Molino del Rey. The names of Bragg, Hardee and Breckinridge were in the mouths of men, who had been held to their bloody work by these bright exemplars. Wherever the bullets were thickest, there the generals were found—forgetful of safety, and ever crying—"Come!"
Governor Harris had done good service as volunteer aid to General Johnston; and Governor George M. Johnson, of Kentucky, had gone into the battle as a private and had sealed his devotion to the cause with his blood. Cheatham and Bushrod Johnson bore bloody marks of the part they took; while Breckinridge, who had already won undying fame, added to his reputation for coolness, daring, and tenacity, by the excellence with which he covered the rear of the army on its retreat to Corinth.
The results of the battle of Shiloh—while they gave fresh cause for national pride—were dispiriting and saddening. It seemed as though the most strenuous efforts to marshal fine armies—and the evacuation of city after city to concentrate troops—were only to result in an indiscriminate killing, and no more; as if the fairest opportunities for a crushing blow to the enemy were ever to be lost by error, or delay.
The death of General Johnston, too—seemingly so unnecessary from the nature of his wound—caused a still deeper depression; and the public voice, which had not hesitated to murmur against him during the eventful weeks before the battle, now rose with universal acclaim to canonize him when dead. It cried out loudly that, had he lived through the day of Shiloh, the result would have been different.
It must be the duty of impartial history to give unbiased judgment on these mooted points; but the popular verdict, at the time, was that Beauregard had wasted the precious moment for giving the coup-de-grace. The pursuit of the Federals stopped at six o'clock; and if, said people and press, he had pushed on for the hour of daylight still left him, nothing could possibly have followed but the annihilation, or capitulation, of Grant's army.
On the other hand, Beauregard's defenders replied that the army was so reduced by the terrible struggle of twelve hours—and more by straggling after the rich spoils of the captured camp—as to render further advance madness. And in addition to this, it was claimed that he relied on the information of a most trusty scout—none other than Colonel John Morgan—that Buell's advance could not possibly reach the river within twenty-four hours. Of course, in that event, it was far better generalship to rest and collect his shattered brigades, and leave the final blow until daylight.
An erroneous impression prevailed in regard to this fight, that Johnston had been goaded into a precipitate and ill-judged attack by the adverse criticisms of a portion of the press. No one who knew aught of that chivalric and true soldier would for an instant have believed he could lend an ear to such considerations, with so vast a stake in view; and the more reasonable theory came to be accepted—that he desired to strike Grant before the heavy columns that Buell was pouring down could join him.